Conjugate-dual clusters

Abstract

Discovery of clusters with high symmetrical geometry, such as C60 fullerene, always attracts lots of interest because of their diverse nature. However, most of such interesting clusters were sporadically discovered; is there any systematic method to explore all possible high symmetrical clusters? Herein, we propose an idea to systematically construct high symmetrical structures based on a novel conjugate-dual (co-dual) concept. A co-dual structure would be constructed by conjugately combining one high symmetrical polyhedron and its corresponding dual. In such co-dual structures, the symmetry of the original polyhedron could be kept or even promoted in some special cases. This provides a way to explore high symmetrical polyhedra and leads to a new cluster family, co-dual clusters. In this paper, we have systematically studied the spherical co-dual clusters with one- or two-element shells and found a series of stable cage-like and core–shell clusters. The co-dual structures would be a new treasure box for hunting novel clusters.